Context-Aware Entrepreneurship Education: Exploring the Educators Perspective

Abstract

The question that motivates the present study is whether entrepreneurship educators confront the context where entrepreneurship education is implemented. Recent studies indicate that homogenisation of entrepreneurial methods has occurred over time promoting a monolithic conception of innovation-driven start-ups, often technological, as a prototype for entrepreneurial courses’ outcomes. Nonetheless, entrepreneurship does not only accommodate ambitious start-ups for growth but also small firms that significantly contribute to employability and social inclusion. Social problems are also tackled. Innovation needs to be translated to different disciplines and social contexts of populations instead of the mere proliferation of a few innovative firms’ cases in classrooms.

Concurrently, rapid changes in the business environment (crises) ask for reflections regarding the content of entrepreneurship from both educators and students. Thus, context and adjustment to contexts is a timely concern for the future of entrepreneurship education and its inclusive character. Given the previous considerations, the present study seeks for quantitative evidence from worldwide entrepreneurship educators on whether they adjust, or do not adjust, their teaching to the context. Contexts included in this study pertain to: political, economical, sociological, ecological/environmental and legal. Adjustment to context was also investigated for different entrepreneurial teaching tasks, such as idea generation, innovation, strategy, team formation, fundraising, social responsibility and others.

The results indicate that educators take into account the context to an extent but there is a rising consensus that entrepreneurial teaching needs to be more context-aware in the future. The more the educators consider context in their current teaching the more they are willing to modify their teaching to different contexts in the future. The results show that there is room for future research regarding context-aware entrepreneurship whilst some research directions are derived in the last part of the article. This is a first attempt to quantitatively examine evidence for the role of the context in entrepreneurial teaching in order to obtain insights for a more precise confrontation of learning needs and educators’ perspectives that could render entrepreneurship education more inclusive and efficient.